Gravel Lick

Gravel Lick was a popular location on the Clarion River where people often went to swim or fish. It was a deceptive part of the river, as people assumed it was a shallow section. In many parts, it was, but randomly in other parts it was not. Not only were there sections of deep drop-offs, but there were also extreme undercurrents. In reality, a person needed to be a decent swimmer due to this. I was not. Either way, we could often be found down there, floating on tubes, wading and swimming through the water, or casting a line with a fishing rod in hand.

D.J. and Colleen were brother and sister. They went to the same school as my siblings and me. D.J. was in my grade, and Colleen was in my younger brother Joe's grade. They came from a poor family in the community. To put it simply, D.J. and I did not get along. Hence, both he and I would get into trouble for constantly fighting with each other.

The school we attended had a basketball program for elementary students. The kids were divided into different teams and then assigned to their respective coaches. The coaches for the teams were high school students. D.J. was on the same team as me, but he did not want to play. I am not sure if it was because he was extremely shy or because he didn't have basketball shoes, so he had to play wearing snow boots. Even though I was in the same situation, it did not stop me from making fun of him. I figured if the kid was going to be mean to me, I was gonna give it back to him.

That summer after fifth grade, a year after Sammie had died, my parents decided that they were going to send me to summer camp for a week. I was supposed to leave on a Sunday afternoon for the camp. My parents had left already, as they finally had a weekend to themselves, and I was staying with a neighbor friend who was going to take me to the camp. That morning, I sat in the back of the local church with my friend and several other kids. Of course, the group of us kids attempted to do just about anything that might elicit a loud enough squeal to make people look; stomping on a toe, elbow to the ribs, a flick of an ear, farting sounds, etc. At a point in the service, the minister stood up and began to speak, but his voice was choked with emotion just as quickly. 'I do not know how many of you know what happened in our little community yesterday. Your kids may have gone to school with D.J. and Colleen. Yesterday, they were at Gravel Lick with their mother, along with their aunt and three cousins. Sadly, both D.J. and Colleen drowned along with their mom and two of their three cousins.' Everyone stopped what they were doing. A silence covered the room like a heavy wool blanket. In the silence, I could hear people sniffle while others attempted to cry softly. I just sat there numb. My eyes became like two cups filled with water that overflowed. I thought about all the times I had been mean to D.J., making fun of him for wearing snow boots while trying to play basketball. The last time I had seen Colleen was with her mom at the laundromat, where we had spent a couple of hours playing together while our parents washed and dried clothes.

The story eventually came out regarding what happened to those two siblings, their mom, and their cousins. They had all gone down to Gravel Lick to play in the water. At some point, one of the children had been pulled under by the current. Another child had gone in to try and help, including D.J., and then his mom. Each time, they were pulled under. The aunt witnessed the events from the shore while she held the third cousin, who had been an infant. All five people who had been in the water drowned. The water current had pulled them under into one of the deep drop-offs and pinned them on the rocks. None of them had known how to swim.

Why had I not been nicer, I asked myself over and over. It was a question that ran through my mind a lot that summer, along with a lot of summers after that. Perhaps that is what contributed to some of the self-loathing I felt regarding myself. It was a bitter pill that I never was able to dislodge from my throat.

The moments that followed these events continued to shape me as I grew up. They molded and made me into a young adult. The struggle was knowing how to articulate what was happening to me on the inside. The stamps of life continued to be tattooed onto my eyes and mind. Mike was arrested for murder over a drug deal gone bad. Mandy's mom was murdered and dumped in the Clarion River, where we swam and spent the summers. Nate died of leukemia. Dick Ames shot himself a few days after I had urged my parents to go see him. Becca crashed her car into a pond and drowned. Nathaniel killed himself while driving drunk.

These different moments in time emphasised my drive always to put relationships first. So, as the years went by, when I saw an opportunity to spend time with someone, I did it. This might have been seen in the weekly coffees that I would have with my buddy Jim. We would sit at the local gas station and shoot the shit, really about nothing, yet about everything. Sipping on that terribly burnt gas station coffee, it was as if time would slow down, if just for a few seconds.

After moving away, in one of my visits back to Pennsylvania, I saw Jim again. As I was getting ready to leave to fly back to no-where-land, I was told that he was in the emergency room. There was an unspoken understanding that this was likely our last time together as I stood by his bed and held his hand. With a flash, the moments from over the years zipped by. Despite the tug to not leave, yet the knowledge that it was time, I gently leaned over and hugged my friend and said goodbye.

Harry and I spent a summer working on his new hunting stand. I would often step outside of my house in the mornings, and he would be sitting across the road, waiting for me. We would load up the trailer and then drive it down into the woods to where we were working. As the birds sang and the squirrels chirped, we would work, hammering some nails, and then we would pause to tell a story. We would pull out an apple and begin eating. Before long, we had killed two hours along with a bunch of deer. I remember the evening, I had just gotten off work. I sped home because I knew Harry was not doing well. I parked the car in the driveway and then walked over to his place. As I walked in, they said he had literally just died. I walked to his bed and held his limp hand. What do you say to someone who was like a grandfather to you? I didn't have the words.

The years have come and gone, and the faces drift by the mind's eye, frozen in still frames. Each face floats on the breeze of memory like that of a leaf on a moist, cool autumn day. The colors are bright, as if having just been painted on by Mother Nature. The still frames show the faces of both young and old. All of them have come from different walks of life. One slowly floats down and almost pauses before me, and then just as suddenly is caught by the currents of the breeze that pulls it away. In the brief pause, each frame seems to come alive, the person laughing, talking, staring off into the distance, all like silent movies playing out. It is with each of these moments that there is a realization that they are simply a reminder of who I have become. Some are like that of a sculptor having chiseled an edge, while others apply strokes of color, as an artist to canvas.

"We can love completely without complete understanding."- Norman MacLean